Interview with David Sønstebø

Blockchains, Bandwagons and Chances.

“We believe that the economy works best when it works for everyone, and this new platform is an engine for inclusion” Don Tapscott, ‎Alex Tapscott in Blockchain Revolution

The majority of active members in Cryptoland share this vision, one way or another. It’s quite rare to see that people are in complete agreement, in unison, when it comes to innovation and possible prospects of a technology.

It seems like the field of Blockchains is such a rare case.

8 years ago, 2009, when Satoshi uploaded his whitepaper for the Bitcoin, nobody knew what a Blockchain is.

Bitcoin? Isn’t that this weird Internet money? A way to buy drugs, anonymity, emancipation, a way past the banks. Who knows.

The last years have shown, that these decentralized peer to peer systems can be helpful in many regards.

We can share information, values or we can make contracts, and no one needs to rely on the authenticity of a signature, made by the contractors, bank employees or whoever is part of the deal.

We also can become millionaires in a blink of an eye.

The Blockchain seems to be an overwhelmingly potential thing, and people start to realize that this piece of technology is here to stay.

We all had this moment when we met old friends and we talked about our career, hobbies, what are you doing right now?

“Blockchains”

At this point, we do not explain all 1471 cryptocurrencies. We also don’t explain proof of stake, BIP148, hashes, or scalability. But we boil it down to: “a great new technology, that could be beneficial for all of us“.

Yes -eventually, Blockchains or distributed ledger technologies (DLT) will shape the technological landscape of the future for the better.

Over the last years, the great vision of blockchains was dyed in humanity.

You can easily check for yourself: go to Twitter and look for #bitcoin , #ethereum or #iota and read the first 20 tweets.

It seems like reality in social media channels doesn’t reflect the great vision of a future, built on blockchains, that we all believe in.

Bitcoin is great, who needs Ethereum?

IOTA is a scam, fuck those altcoins!

If I were you, I would invest in Pumpcoin, you heard it here first.

The homo oeconomicus dominates the majority of communication of Blockchains. We do believe in Blockchains, as long as it is our Blockchain, we invested in.

What hypocrisy.

The reason isn’t really mindblowing.

People know that the cryptocurrency-tsunami of investments will be a stepstone for a new generation of millionaires, and they also believe that the more they communicate and advertise, the higher the chances are that they are surfing straight into the six and seven digit Dollar club.

That, of course, doesn’t tell us anything about the technological perks, the technical quality of the system they are cheering for.

We can replace all those tweets, texts and messages with “Buy ***coin, make me rich, please”.

That works in 99% of all cases. At this point, I recommend you go to Twitter and look for #bitcoin: Link.

And there are millions a day. Cryptocurrency/Blockchains have become “the game of pump“.

The incentive of earning money is way higher than supporting the technology itself.

That leads to the neverending brigading, FUD’ing and lying, regardless of the truth.

It also leads to forks, mining conglomerates, and divided communities.

People create useless forks, they create special vocabulary that sounds meaningful, or they write long, technical blog posts where they compare the old system with their new, better Blockchain with a fancy logo or a quote of a renowned person, that vouches for the upcoming initial coin offering (ICO).

People collect hundreds of millions of Dollars, for a 5 head developer-team.

The innovation, luckily, doesn’t take place in social media channels and is not equivalent to the initial amount of investments. It happens behind closed curtains because partnerships are behind NDA’s, in most cases.

If you invest in Blockchains, invest in the technology, the team, the prospects and the advantages it has over others, despite what social media writes on a Thursday in November.

If you follow social media channels, you may take short-term gains, that are based on emotional market-reactions, but the best strategy is looking for the best tech, your favorized project and to hold onto it. For years, if necessary.

This is not a cheerful article for IOTA, this is just a reminder, that we should not lose the aim for all of this. This is greater than our purse, so let’s not reduce it to a Kardashian’esque reality soap.

Needless to say, I’m looking forward to times, when exchanges, ICO’s and crypto-industries are regulated by governments. Yes. Governments. They are here to stay anyway. Maybe for taking part in the technical and neutral maintenances of these systems, while they provide 10% of the hashpower for earning parts of the currency.

A self-sustaining task, that would fit the government while people and companies could use these distributed systems for their purposes. Just an idea of a solution for a disrupting innovation. Same could work with banks. They couldn’t stop the network, but they could become a useful part of it.

We need to accept banks and governments because unregulated systems lead to game-theoretical circle jerking, where everyone works for himself.

Why? Because the image of Satoshi’s vision implied improvement of life, emancipation for the people, we either believe in it, or we reduce that to a flowery phrase that fits right into the buzzword banter of investors.

He didn’t want to create a playground for ludicrous investors, cryptocurrency casino web pages, pump & dump groups or emotional discussions on Reddit, that are solely aiming for changing the sentiment of a cryptocurrency.

What we need is an education for our future. A solid comprehension for the possibilities of cryptocurrencies, not investment wise.

Bitcoin is already used in countless countries. The value of a BTC is over $7000, as I’m writing. Is the value of one bitcoin important? Not for the innovation.

Apart from the price that holds investors captive, Bitcoin is used as a standard currency already. Over 330 ATM all over the world make it possible to use Bitcoin in people lifes on a daily basis.

Currencies are one field, technological advances for the producing industry is another.

These technologies are not just objects of an investment game, they are part of a paradigm shift on a global scale.

Foxconn already communicated that ~300.000 of their 400.000 workers are replaced by machines in the near future. Distributed ledger technologies are on the verge of being used everywhere.

The World Economy Forum in Davos hosted presentations and discussions for over 2500 managers, thought leaders and scientists.

They debated about networking, big data, robotics, automation, artificial intelligence and the Internet Of Things. Better known as Industry 4.0.

Ask any company, bank, government for the importance and disruptive impact magnitude of distributed ledger technologies. They already know that for years.

The Deutsche Bank released parts of an internal study with an intimidating result: For the first time in industrial times, an industrial revolution will destroy workplaces instead of creating them.

A heavy transformation for industry and society.

We don’t need Tradingview, bots for margin trading, or hashtags with edgy love-declarations for a coin.

We need solutions, to integrate these systems in the financial and industrial infrastructures, to embrace the coming century.

This enabler tech could bring basic wealth for every region on the globe, it could transform the energy sector, revolutionize the sharing or exchanging of value, it could enable a new, stable form of democracy and shift our society from a purely antagonistic, hedonistic, to a thriving, thinking, sustainable society.

We are taking part in interesting times that possibly change the way we live and work on a global scale, forever.

We should accept them as such and use innovation to make it happen, in the best way possible, instead of advertising innovation towards our own pockets.

@TechCrunch Would love that for the cryptospace, together with a standard they had to accept like using primary sources, commentaries have to be marked as such and conflicts of interests should be marked at the beginning of an article. Crypto desperately needs a standard. #iota #btc #eth